"It can have the joy of bodily sensations and then recall them, study them, comment on them, on its own instincts, its own memories. It can dream of ways for procuring fuller life, and put the dreams into any desired shape. Man struts from his jungle, laughing aloud, with lust for life and joy at his fulness thereof. But all the while, pain, the darkness, the still inert unconsciousness in existence that oppresses and drags back into its own dead inertness, is laughing still more heartily.
"Everywhere it checks, but man in his egotism forgets that he is a slave, bound and hampered, and boasts himself master. Death sweeps in, lightning kills, thunder crashes over him, and filled with fear, with something bigger than he can grasp, he falls upon his knees, and cries, 'God!'
"Then begins the mess, the tangled, detestable, bloody, dirty, riotously glorious, sublime mystery that is me. Me and you, Claire. Here we are."
Claire leaned over him, her breath suspended in her eagerness.
"Me, the man, specialized, sex-specialized, made to record, to enjoy, to remember, to create, and to die at last from sheer wearing out myself seeking life.
"And you, you the woman, deeper, more vitally sexed, more complete in your memory of the past, more true in your record of it, less a sport, more a true seeker and knower of life—you, the embodiment of it all, memory, instinct, fear, passion, tenderness, hate—cunning, strong, wise, far-seeing, and altogether mistress of the whole brute world, mistress of everything in life and destiny save death. You, too, worn out by struggling to live more fully, but not until your lust for life has sent children out to carry on the struggle.
"Oh, Claire, it is you the woman, demanding at any cost that your child live, who gives us our great knowledge, our beauty, our selfishness, and our strident sex, our pain."
Claire caught her breath and sobbed: "Lawrence, Lawrence!"
"Yes," he went on, "that is the end of it all. I see it now. You, unknown to yourself, demanding your child, stung to fear of death without it here in the wilderness, you love me—I know it, you love me. And I—I love you. It was that which drove you to speak as you did. I see. I love you!"
She sank down on the pillow beside him. In her heart was a great relief which carried her away in a flood of tears. Lawrence talked on unheeded by her. He had made everything clear, and she was utterly happy.